


Atté, Atté

by SpaceJackalope



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Book 6: Return of the Thief (Queen's Thief), Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Missing Scene, Romance, Vanilla, YOU KNOW WHAT THIS IS, including - Freeform, listen you looked at the title, short story: Alyta's Missing Earring (Queen's Thief)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 05:35:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28951284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceJackalope/pseuds/SpaceJackalope
Summary: "The amount of women in [Attolia] who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad. It is simply washing one's clean linen in public." --After Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being EarnestEugenides and Attolia take advantage of private moments during the course of The Return of the Thief.And then Pheris alludes to them in his historical memoir years later, the absolute scamp.
Relationships: Attolia | Irene/Eugenides
Comments: 12
Kudos: 47





	Atté, Atté

**Author's Note:**

> With love to the QT Discord community. <3
> 
> I just think this fandom deserves more smut and I'm not afraid to write it myself!

_ I _

Eugenides shut the heavy door behind the little Erondites and stifled a chuckle. His queen raised a single eyebrow in question. “My attendants,” he said drily, “look like kittens who have been scooped up in an unyielding apron.” He returned to her side. “I envy you your court-wise marlyons.”

“No you don’t.”

“No, I don’t,” he laughed, folding her fingertips into his hands and kissing them. She understood the implied apology. 

“What was it you were planning, Gen?”

“Are you talking about Quedue? I don’t want to think about Quedue.” He drew her little finger into his mouth and curled his tongue around it. 

Attolia widened her eyes in feigned innocence. “I only thought we may need to employ your plan in the future, my king.”

“Oh, it was highly tailored to the situation, completely wasted now.” 

“Not even fit to let me fawn over my brilliant husband?” She ran her hands along his shoulders and upper arms. Gen sank forward, not meeting her eyes, to let his chin rest on her knee. His hand found the satin ribbon lacings of her shoes. One-handed, he untied the bow and pulled the ribbon free of the sandal’s topmost pair of stitched eyelets, drawing the ribbon in smooth, looping designs across her calf. The weather was uncomfortably hot, and she had worn no stockings, so the cool fabric tickled the fine hairs on her leg, and she twitched slightly. The motion jostled Gen’s head on her knee, and he accidentally caught her eye. Her lips thinned into a familiar shape. 

Eugenides batted his eyelashes. “My queen, are you suggesting I had an insufficiency of forethought?”

“I am suggesting that you were within an inch of castrating him in the middle of the night.”

“Irene! I would never be so messy.” She waited patiently, wending her fingers into his curls. “I had a boating accident planned out.”

She clucked her tongue. “Repetition is so unlike you.”

“As if anyone would have thought your death was an  _ accident _ .” Gen had, by this time, drawn her unlaced sandal away from her foot, and Irene crossed her legs to give him better access to the other one. “I did almost poison him last night,” he admitted, “but Yorn was drinking with him, and I could hardly cast suspicion onto the kitchens while trying to defend them.” He made quicker work of this sandal, without the pretense of doing it discreetly. “I also considered stealing papers from another ambassador and framing Quedue. That would probably have been most elegant.”

“But hardly satisfying.” Gen had seethed coldly in private, summarising for his queen the intricacies of how her kitchens were run, the pond-surface ripples of Quedue’s offenses even to the lads who polished shoes. The impact of his more overt dishonors were obvious to her already, but listening to the Thief expose her palace like the diagram of a tree, its roots immeasurable, Irene had been reminded of the time he had spent posing as just such a member of her court. He no longer frightened her (sometimes she had to tell herself this very firmly), but she would have been grateful he was on her side even if she had been indifferent to him as a companion.

The queen was far from indifferent.

His hand, slightly cool against her too-hot skin, slid up her outer thigh, barely displacing the light linen of her gown. Irene uncrossed her legs and settled herself more comfortably against the couch. That this canted her knees apart from each other appeared incidental. Eugenides looked up into her face with a knowing smile, before skimming his hand across the arc of her thigh and up, to give a single feather-light brush of his thumb against her clit.

“Very interesting,” she remarked, a small hitch in her voice. Gen slid each of his remaining fingers, taking orderly turns like well-trained soldiers, across the same path his thumb had traveled. 

And then he withdrew his hand entirely. 

“Gen!” she protested, tugging harder than she meant to on his hair in dismay.

“My queen?” he prompted, all naive innocence. Irene pulled up her skirt pointedly. Gen, for all that he was cross-legged on the floor, bowed elegantly. “My queen.”

The Thief folded his hands decorously in his lap and sucked her clit into his mouth until she gasped and resettled her knees to rest against his shoulders. He gave her warm, delicate licks along the crevasses of her labia, but did not put his tongue inside her until she had returned her hands to his scalp, sighing in satisfaction like she had entered a hot bath.

Once, when he was a boy and thought she was a monster, he had stuck his tongue out at her and she had swallowed a laugh of surprise to see that he could curl his tongue multiple times like a flower or cloverleaf. She’d all but forgotten it until he’d demonstrated on their wedding night. He’d been so surprised by the sound she made that neither of them could stop laughing for several minutes--Irene astonished to realize she still  _ could _ .

She made a different noise when he did it now, of approval and urgency, and tugged lightly on his curls, as you might gently tug the ears of a pet in your lap. “That’s good,” she said, so softly he might have missed it--but no, he hummed in pleasure against her. He did something especially nice with his tongue, then, which made her twitch and pull his hair. He chuckled without stopping, shoulders trembling slightly under her limbs.

When she came, he pulled away, face shining with slick and affection, and fumbled for a handkerchief. He wrinkled his nose a little. “I wonder whether the lapdogs are still wringing their hands outside.”

The queen made an inelegant grunt. “Does it matter?”

“Well, it does if I am to get us to our own room without bringing all of them along with us.” 

She waved a hand airily. “Bring the other couch over?”

“The couch, my love?”

“Do you think I’m done with you already?”

~~~

_ II _

“A blessing on the head of every clever gardener,” murmured Attolis, making his queen laugh. They were on a bench surrounded and sheltered by a dense rose bower, and their retinues far enough to be out of earshot, if the monarchs were careful. 

Attolia had her hands under her husband’s clothing. She had drawn shapes along his hips and the ticklish places along his ribcage until he was panting, forehead touching her own. She shifted her face carefully, not wanting to startle him as she took his lower lip in a kiss, another, three. 

He would have run away with her at any time; all she had to do was say the word. She was amused to realize that his public threat to do so earlier in the day had likewise cemented in her mind that he was content to stay. Nobody had ever cared so much about whether Irene was  _ happy _ .

She dragged her hands down his body and palmed his crotch, making him startle, biting his lip and smacking his hook against a support of the bower, making pale orange petals, thin and apt to crumple, rain onto their heads, shoulders, laps. Gen smiled almost shyly, and reached to brush them out of his hair. Attolia caught his wrist. “Don’t. You look nice.” He batted his lashes at her. 

“I make my poor attendants”-- the queen scoffed--“my  _ poor _ , much put-upon attendants work so hard to maintain my appearance that I might enhance your court,” he kissed her mouth, “and your bed,” he kissed her again, “and all along we never thought to try this. We’ll save a small fortune on gold powder. The secretary of the exchequer will be endeared to me…” he trailed off as Irene drew his cock out of his trousers and gave it a slow stroke.

“You’ll start a new fashion, my king,” Irene teased. 

“For having my cock out?” and Attolia slapped a hand over her mouth to muffle her cackle.

“You’re incorrigible.” 

He grinned at her. “But pretty.”

His queen lifted an eyebrow. “You are that,” she agreed, before sinking into his lap, onto his cock. She snapped her hips experimentally and gave him a questioning look.

He groaned in approval. “Atté, Atté.”

~~~

_ III _

Attolia slid her delicate purple gown from her shoulders and let it fall to the ground. Gen, on the other side of the monarchical bed, shrugged out of his jacket and pouted beneath his feathered half-mask when his wife reclined across the covers and propped up her chin on her hands, with no sign of intending to help him. He was tempted to run his hook’s knife-edge through the fastenings of his shirt and trousers, but couldn’t quite bring himself to be so wasteful. 

Instead he slowed down, against the will of his pulse, still high from dancing, and eased himself gradually out of the clothes, a smile growing unconsciously under the intense scrutiny of his queen. His shirt was open at the collar and exposed his clavicles and part of his sternum, and so his attendants had flung silver powder--to harmonize better with the moleskin suit than gold--onto the hair of his chest. Much of it clung there still, but some flakes had been shaken down his torso and clung there; when he pushed his lower garments away, they discovered sparkling fragments even on his thighs. 

Eugenides stretched out beside Attolia. Her hair still bore the raindrops of diamond and pearl her attendants had dressed it with, but she had removed her mask. Gen still wore his feathery crown and mask both. Irene gave his ass an affectionate squeeze, allowing herself to be pulled into his arms. He seemed to have a mission, caressing her skin with a methodical approach that could have been clinical if there had not been so much sincerity in every gesture. His lips were parted with something like awe, or reverence, and Attolia shivered, knowing both could be true. 

“Where did you slip off to earlier?” she whispered, not wholly expecting an answer.

“Ask me again when I’m not overcome with your love for me,” Gen responded gently. 

She cupped his face in her hands. “I love you like the sea loves the moon.” Ever dancing in phase with one another.

“That’s just it,” Eugenides said, and his voice shook. “I believe you.”

They rolled together, without discussion, to tangle into a familiar position, one where Irene could bask in Gen’s attention without having to do any work unless she particularly wished it. Sometimes she did, but tonight she was happy to be pliant, and watch her pretty Thief with soft eyes while he fucked her. 

She touched her fingers to his lips, enjoying their soft give under her touch. The queen abruptly found she was tired of not watching her husband’s face, and reached around to the back of his skull to untie and remove the feathery mask, leaving his crown alone. Gen let her do it, but ducked his head self-consciously and rubbed at one eye with his stump. “Oh, Gen,” she breathed, seeing tear stains in the candlelight. “Oh, my love.”

“It’s fine. I’m fine.”

“What on earth happened?”

He looked away from her gaze, and then back. He has stilled, but not withdrawn from her, and she wrapped her legs more firmly around him in lieu of a hug. “I spoke with Moira.”

“Oh.”

“All is well,” he soothed. “I only--” he smiled brilliantly, the silver on his body gleaming in the low light, looking for all the world like the gods and princes of her old nurse’s stories. “You are my heart’s desire,” he said, repeated from a recent conversation. “And--and I am yours?” his voice wavered, and she suspected he didn’t mean to phrase it as a question.

Attolia stared at Attolis in astonishment. “You needed a goddess to tell you that?”

Gen bit his lip, and Irene shifted so that they rolled onto their sides and he could nuzzle against her. “So, so, so,” he admitted, blushing, and they both laughed.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not going to make them A Series, but this is spiritually a sequel to my Helen/Sophos fic: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27921283
> 
> I just love them SO much and they love each other even more? I'm very emotional at all times over it.
> 
> You can follow me on Tumblr as Cartograffiti!
> 
> The Queen's Thief Discord server, currently known as The Geninsula, can be joined via this link! https://discord.gg/JYJufae


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